Distance perception as a function of photographic area of view

Distance perception of depicted objects was examined as a function of photographic area of view. Subjects viewed slides of natural outdoor scenes and directly estimated the distances to specified objects. Area of view was manipulated by means of photographing each scene with lenses of five different focal lengths: 135, 80, 48, 28, and 17 mm. Distance perception along the pictorial depth plane was systematically transformed through changing the photographic area of view: the shorter the focal length of the camera lens, the wider the area of view, and the greater the perceived distance. Linear functions for each subject's distance judgments revealed a very high goodness of fit. Both the y-intercepts and the slopes increased as focal length decreased. The increasing y-intercepts suggest that viewers place themselves farther away from the depicted scene as focal length decreases, compensating for the advancing proximal edge. The increasing slopes suggest that distance information throughout the pictorial depth plane appears to change with focal length. The subjects also made direct judgments of foreground truncation, revealing that foreground truncation decreased as focal length decreased, but that this decrease did not account for the considerable expansion in distance perception.